“Chaos was
the law of nature; Order was the dream of man”.
-Henry Adams
“What
difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the
mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy
name of liberty or democracy?”
-Mahatma
Gandhi
It is without doubt that the Nigerian
demography is an extremely complex one in every sense and a few people have
used this complexity to their advantage and intend to continue doing so at all
cost.
Since its amalgamation in 1914
Nigeria has been a simmering cauldron of all sorts of strife and running
conflicts. Crime, fraud and corruption crept into the mix unnoticed and
unheeded. One after the other they have been added into this brew which was
already so potent that their addition largely went unnoticed until they had
changed the colour and texture of the brew.
Now, here we are, ensnared by guilt,
trapped in a quagmire of corruption and fraud, enmeshed in a never ending
circle of tribal and religious violence as we still reel from the chaos and
destruction wrought by one Civil war.
Here we are guardians of an entity
which was another man’s dream, a foreigner’s notion of a nation. Here we are
bleeding and striving to sustain an entity that nature herself strives to tear
apart. Here we are crying and gnashing our teeth at this chaos that streams and
gushes upon us.
Here we are, in search of peace yet
unwilling to offer her the sacrifices she solemnly demands, knowing full well
that these supplications would involve disorientating ourselves and giving up
the very ideals that define our separate entities and name us as individual
people.
A compromise seems the best way
forward, but at what cost?
Would a compromise issue us peace or
simply a cessation of hostilities? Would a war without arms ensue and guarantee
the birth of a generation of hate and an empire of intrigue and espionage or
would it offer integration, coexistence and tolerance? A cross roads it does
seem but at this speed it is impossible to veer either left or right. Full
steam ahead and inevitable destruction seems most likely. All the same, it is
said that Nature herself often plays tricks, and she could suddenly come to a
halt in doing so throwing her inhabitants together forcing them to make peace.
It has been a tumultuous 24 months for
Nigeria. Each day that goes by sees mountains of uncertainty looming ever
closer.
The trick with using the carrot and
the stick goes with making sure that your adversary believes that accepting the
carrot is worth the while in contrast to the very real threat posed by the
presence of the stick. When you substitute the stick with a cucumber then you
would have a problem.
In the path of an inferno every item
is an accelerant. Snuffing out a flame would ultimately prevent you from
dealing with an inferno that could potential annihilate everything in its path.
Nigeria’s’ problems though complex are
not insurmountable. There are quite a number of solutions that do not involve
bloodletting, though with so many variables and equally as many (counterfeit)
constants the calculus of this problem becomes ever more complex with time.
